Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(a) a set of equipment or clothes.

1899–1900

C.L. Cullen Tales of the Ex-Tanks 60: I’ve got the front – meaning my layout of togs.

(b) the table, dice, cards etc required for setting up a gambling club, whether legitimate or as a prop for a confidence trick.

c.1858		J.H. Green Reformed Gambler 229: The beautiful ivory checks, and velvet ‘lay out,’ also help to ornament the faro table; their cards, too, are prepared in a manner to carry out their wily schemes.
1861		N.E. Police Gaz. (Boston, MA) 5 Oct. 6/3: [The] table has painted upon it what is termed by gamblers a ‘lay out’.
1871		Galaxy (N.Y.) July 59: The universal American game is ‘faro’ [...] There is, first, the large massive table covered with green cloth, and on it, occupying less than half its surface, is the ‘lay-out,’ which is a full suit of cards, from the ace to the king, painted in a parallelogram.
1884		Chicago Trib. 25 May 13/1: The members of the [police] force are so green that they can’t tell a faro layout from a decorative art exhibition.
1889		K. Munroe Golden Days of ’49 26: A white man who doesn’t know a monte lay-out from a checker-board.
1890		Bird o’ Freedom 15 Jan. 7/5: [He] has made himself a faro lay-out; where we all play on Sunday afternoons.
1899–1900		C.L. Cullen Tales of the Ex-Tanks 177: He wanted to put all the layouts out of business.
1914		Ade ‘The New Fable of the Intermittent Fusser’ in Ade’s Fables 53: He looked over the Lay-Out and decided that it was just as easy to mingle with the Face Cards as to sleep in the Discards.
1920		Leavenworth Echo (WA) 16 Jan. 4/3: Everything in my place is run to give you a square deal [...] I got the only ‘layout’ in the state.
1938		(con. mid-19C) H. Asbury Sucker’s Progress 257: When he wasn’t operating his own bank he was bucking the tiger from the other side of the layout.
1940		D. Maurer Big Con 11: Ben Marks [...] had quite an extensive layout at Council Bluffs, Iowa.
1952		(con. 1920s) ‘Harry Grey’ Hoods (1953) 180: In the front center of the room was the roulette layout.

(c) any form of display, e.g. a showman’s stall.

1865		C. White Sausage Makers 4: I’m getting up a few extras for some Aldermen and Members of Congress, and want to have a big lay out.
1886		Lantern (N.O.) 8 Sept. 2: Who may never have seen such a lay-out.
1890		Saginaw Courier-Herald 4 July n.p.: A fine layout of fruits and vegetables at C. Rimmele’s, 122 North Hamilton [DA].
1890		Stock Grower and Farmer 26 Apr. 3/1: Mr. Armour’s daughters must have struck their pa for a new layout of spring clothes and somebody had to be squeezed [DA].
1906		A.H. Lewis Confessions of a Detective 71: I landed two cracksmen with a big lay-out of furs.
1912		Van Loan ‘Loosening Up of Hogan’ in Ten-Thousand-Dollar Arm 157: The National Commission never had as swell a layout [i.e. a feast] as this.
1920		Ade Hand-made Fables 266: Many who had Homes of their own touched the Layout lightly.
1938		J.B. Booth Sporting Times 266: Now Joe Dillon’s ‘lay-out’ took [...] a strongly pugilistic complexion.
1951		Schindler in Hamilton Men of the Und. 52: The instant his eyes fell upon his ‘lay out’ of gold.

(d) (US und.) the tools used for counterfeiting.

1880

Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 10 Jan. 3/3: The detectives [...] had no idea that they would be rewarded by finding a complete counterfeiting ‘lay-out’ [...] everything necessary for the manufacture of silver coins [...] dies, battery, retort, lathe, and, in fact, a complete ‘coney’ outfit .

(e) (US) a coach and horses.

1922

B. Hecht A Thousand and One Afternoons [ebook] [T]he idea of Queen Bess blowing in $5,000 for a tally-ho layout to ride to the races in! Six horses and two drivers in yellow and blue livery and [...] the beribboned and painted coach bouncing down the boulevard.

(a) an opium den.

1892		W. Norr Stories of Chinatown 37: He had had a number of invitations to smoke at various layouts.
1899–1900		C.L. Cullen Tales of the Ex-Tanks 390: The Dog had started in my flat one of the most prosperous yen-hok layouts this side of San Francisco.
1944		D. Burley Orig. Hbk of Harlem Jive 59: The way that skull, Hitler, and his Johns are kicking the gong around in the layout across the drink.
1952		(con. 1910s) G. Fowler Schnozzola 23: Chuck Connors brought sightseers to the Chinatown maze in the early mornings to show them opium layouts.
1990		(con. 1930s–60s) H. Huncke Guilty of Everything (1998) 33: It [i.e. a book] dealt with smugglers and Chinese junks and opium dens in Shanghai, posh layouts with cushions on the floor and naked or half-naked women and men lying about.

(b) (drugs, also hop layout) the various accoutrements – pipe, box, needle etc – required for smoking opium.

1882		H.H. Kane Opium Smoking 51: I had [...] purchased a full ‘lay-out’.
1886		‘Life in a New York Opium Den’ in T. Byrnes Professional Criminals of America 🌐 The ‘lay-out’ consisted of an ordinary little tin waiter, a knitting-needle flattened at one end and gradually receding to a point at the other, which he called a yen hock, a little glass lamp of peculiar pattern, a wet sponge in a china dish, a small tin dish to deposit cigarette stumps or ashes, and a pipe of very curious construction. A small clam-shell contained a black, tarry-looking stuff, and this was the opium.
1891		N.Y. Times 28 Sept. 2: Eleven pipes, 15 bowls, 8 pots, and 5 boxes of opium, 6 ‘lay outs,’ 4 trays, scales, 2 revolvers, and $82 in money were seized.
1894		Mirror of Life 3 Mar. 2/2: The opium layouts were put aside, and the fine Chinese whiskey placed upon the table.
1901		C.R. Wooldridge Hands Up! 215: A ‘layout’ can be purchased for any amount up to $5. It consists of the ‘yen hop,’ or pipe, usually made of a section and a half of heavy bamboo, about an inch and a half in diameter, and is usually tipped with ivory or gold; the ‘yen she gow,’ or small chisel, for cleaning out the bowl of the pipe; the ‘yen hock,’ or needle, on which the opium is cooked and rolled into pills over the flame from the little peanut oil lamp; the ‘sui gow,’ a sponge for cleaning the bowl of the pipe after every smoke; the ‘hen toy,’ in which the opium is kept, and a tray on which the above utensils are placed when in use.
1914		Amer. Mag. 77 June 31–5: When I became a regular smoker I bought a ‘layout’ — pipe, bowls, lamp, tray, yen hocks, everything — and indulged my habit in the ‘joint’ of a white smoker where I was a favored patron.
1920		F. Williams Hop-Heads 115: In the center of the room is the yen she quai, an old Chinese who deals out your layout and cards and takes your money.
1926		J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 191: An old Chinaman [...] shuffled by me hastily with a hop layout and spread it in a near-by bunk.
1937		‘Boxcar Bertha’ Sister of the Road (1975) 115: This particular outfit, or ‘layout,’ consisted of six bowls and four stems, three small traveling lamps that burned peanut oil, a dozen yen hoks, (like a crochet hook, but finer and more flexible, used for preparing the opium pill) and three yen shee gows, steel instruments for removing the yen shee or ash from the inside of the bowl.
1938		D. Maurer ‘Lang. of the Und. Narcotic Addict’ Pt 2 in Lang. Und. (1981) 104/1: hop lay-out. An opium smoker’s layout.
1946		Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 98: I eased down [...] until the opium layout was right square in my chops.
1953		Anslinger & Tompkins Traffic In Narcotics 311: lay-out. The equipment used by an opium smoker.
1959		J.E. Schmidt Narcotics Lingo and Lore 85: Hop layout – The equipment or outfit of an opium smoker.
1969		R.R. Lingeman Drugs from A to Z (1970) 140: layout [...] opium-smoking equipment.
1981		D.E. Miller Bk of Jargon 342: layout: [...] 2. Equipment for smoking opium.

(c) the syringe, cotton etc required for injecting a narcotic.

1920		F. Williams Hop-Heads 17: The table was littered with the layout of a drug victim.
1938		D. Maurer ‘Lang. of the Und. Narcotic Addict’ Pt 2 in Lang. Und. (1981) 105/1: lay-out. [...] the hypodermic and all accessories.
1971		E.E. Landy Underground Dict. (1972).
1981		D.E. Miller Bk of Jargon 342: layout: 1. Works.
2001		ONDCP Street Terms 14: Lay-out — Equipment for taking drugs.